Flight safety and national security cannot be compromised, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Katharine Chang (張小月) said yesterday, and urged the Chinese government to respect the public opinion in Taiwan and launch negotiations with the government.
Chang made the remarks at the council’s annual year-end news conference in response to China’s unilateral activation of northbound flights on the M503 route earlier this month.
She also presented an annual summary report and explained the council’s goals for this year.
Photo: CNA
The activation of the northbound flights and three extension routes — W121, W122 and W123 — on Jan. 4 affects flight safety and Taiwan’s national security, Chang said.
The Civil Aeronautics Administration’s (CAA) freezing the approval of two Chinese airlines’ application for a total of 176 additional flights during the Lunar New Year holiday is a light response to Beijing’s move and the nation’s high level of constraint has gained public acclaim, she said.
The activation of the route is a cross-strait issue that should go beyond pan-blue and pan-green politics, and the government should not be involved in cross-strait negotiations regarding civil aviation routes, Chang said.
The nation should reach a consensus and refuse to compromise on the issue, she said, adding that the government is urging Beijing to launch negotiations to resolve the conflict as soon as possible.
“The Chinese government has repeatedly said that the activation of the M503 flight route and three extension routes is its internal affair, and has nothing to do with Taiwan’s flight routes and destinations” Chang said. “However, this significantly differs from the reality of cross-strait interactions and we cannot accept this remark.”
Both sides of the Taiwan Strait reached a consensus on the usage of the routes through a civil aviation “mini-cross-strait meeting” in March 2015, so the government is insisting on and executing the policy that was enforced by the former administration, she said, adding that the conflict should technically be negotiated in another meeting, not through politics.
Whether the issue could be resolved in a satisfactory manner would a test to see if the Chinese government respects public opinion in Taiwan, and an important indicator for Taiwanese to estimate the development of cross-strait relations, so Beijing should not underestimate its meaning, Chang said.
Asked about the Chinese government’s suppression of Taiwan in the international community while offering incentives to Taiwanese, she said more challenges in cross-strait relations are expected this year as Beijing continues to neglect official negotiations while increasing civilian interactions.
However, there is a political aim behind China’s offering of incentives to Taiwanese, so the government would review and amend regulations to deal with the situation, Chang added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching